Condom conundrum: Porn industry ponders latex law

“This is no different than supervising restaurants or nail salons or barbershops,” Weinstein said. “You fill out forms, you are granted a permit and, periodically, somebody goes out and does spot inspections.”

Easy to implement or not, porn producers say the cost of paying for permits will likely be steep and the drop-off in sales could bankrupt them.

“Certainly this is the biggest threat that I’ve seen to the industry in a very, very long time,” said Steven Hirsch, chief executive of Vivid Entertainment Group, one of the largest purveyors of porn films, including celebrity sex tapes and popular X-rated parodies of “Batman” and “Superman” films. “There have been obscenity prosecutions, but this is something on a whole different level.”

Hirsch, who co-founded Vivid 28 years ago, said he is confident the industry will get the law overturned on the grounds it violates filmmakers’ First Amendment rights of free expression.

If it isn’t overturned, he said his company will simply move production out of Los Angeles County to survive.

Several people who attended an emergency meeting of the industry’s advocacy group, the Free Speech Coalition, last week, said porn producers have already been in touch with officials in Las Vegas and parts of Florida. In some instances, they said, tax incentives have been offered to lure them.

Through a quirk in county law, the industry might even be able to pack up and move just a few miles down the freeway to Pasadena or Long Beach.

Those municipalities, although located in Los Angeles County, have their own health departments, and Pasadena said earlier this week it won’t enforce the new law.

That would be just fine for many actors and directors, who say they don’t really want to leave their home base.

“People forget that porn people are people too,” said Kylie Ireland, a veteran actress and director who has appeared in such films as “Being Porn Again” and “Calipornication.”

“They forget that we have families and we are married and we have kids and we have lives and jobs and hobbies just like everybody else.”